Plastic bags have been replacing paper bags in the United States since the 1970s (and elsewhere more recently) in the grocery and retail products industries due to the superior and inherent moisture resistant properties and strength of plastic. In these industries, these plastic bags have usually included integrally connected front and rear wall portions and, sometimes, gusseted side wall portions, all secured together at the bottoms thereof by a seal to define a closed bottom on the bag. The bag walls are open at the top to define a mouth portion on the bag. Some of these bags are of the "T-shirt" type which provides spaced integral handles laterally extending upwardly from opposed sides of the open mouth of the bag at the top to provide ease In carrying of the bag by the consumer. However, these plastic bags have also included handleless generally flat top rectangular shape bags, similar to the prior paper bags, without upwardly extending handles. These plastic bags have been provided to and used by the grocery and retail product industries in the form of packs of a plurality of superimposed bags connected together and adapted to be serially opened and removed from the rack, or in the form of a roll of plastic bags connected end-to-end and mounted on a rack to be serially removed and opened up, for packaging of the grocery or retail products. The produce bag market in the United States grocery industry has been dominated over the years by plastic bags on a roll. These bags are typically manufactured of LDPE or HMW-HDPE in gauges from 0.50 to 0.35 mil. The biggest complaint with this style bag by shoppers is the difficulty in getting the bag opened. Recently, grocery produce bags have been introduced of the HMW-HDPE construction which utilize a "star seal" to close the bottom of the bag. The "star seal" design (well known in the industry as a bag having multiple layers and longitudinally folded over on itself and sealed at the bottom so that when it is opened up, the bottom of the bag viewing from the inside resembles a star) got its start in the HMW-HDPE can liner market because of the excellent bottom seal strength it offers with thin gauge films.
Grocery produce bags of this star seal type have been accepted in part because of their strength, but also because they are somewhat easier to open than the traditional roll produce bags. Openability of this star seal type bag is improved due to the increased number of layers of film at the bag mouth. Notwithstanding, the shopper still mistakes the bottom of the bag from the top of the bag leading to frustration in opening of the bag. For the most part, these star seal type plastic produce bags have been provided in the roll form, although some bag packs of superimposed star seal type bags have been proposed. However, to applicant's knowledge, all of these bag packs of star seal type bags have been connected at the bottoms of the bags and suspended from a rack bottom-side-up so that the user must first remove the bag from the bag pack and then open the bag prior to loading of produce therein. This arrangement has presented additional problems with opening of the individual bags and does not provide for serially opening or self-opening of the bags as they are removed from the bag pack and from the rack.